Mar 08

Over the years there has been lots of discussion in the SEO community regarding building links to a web site. The debate is particularly heated at the moment, as Google rolls out its “Jagger” upgrade.

Let’s start with what we mean by inbound links, also called backlinks. These are links from other sites to your URL, which direct the surfer directly to your site when the link is clicked. The basic premise is that if you have high ranking sites linking to you, then you must yourself be important and have valuable content, and hence you should rank highly.

The way in which Google ranks sites is called Pagerank and can be seen as a green line on the Google Toolbar representing ranks 0 to 10. As Google states

PageRank relies on the uniquely democratic nature of the web by using its vast link structure as an indicator of an individual page’s value. In essence, Google interprets a link from page A to page B as a vote, by page A, for page B. But, Google looks at more than the sheer volume of votes, or links a page receives; it also analyzes the page that casts the vote.

Votes cast by pages that are themselves “important” weigh more heavily and help to make other pages “important.”
Continue reading »

written by admin \\ tags: , ,

Mar 08

Search engine rankings are an important factor to consider when you have a website that needs more traffic. If your website doesn’t have a good position in the rankings then no-one will find it, so you need to make sure that your website is ranked highly enough to be seen.

The other important quality to getting high traffic to your site is having a nice arsenal of links. The more links that you have to your site the more traffic you will get, but also, the more links to your site the more search engines like your site. Keeping a nice supply of links pointing at your site requires similar precautions and practices as getting high search engine listings.

Although no SEO company can guarantee a high ranking for your site, here are some tips for raising your search engine ranking. Using these tips will not get you to the top unless your site is the best out there, but they will at least put you into the positioning that you truly deserve.

After all, the internet is basically a free market. You will naturally flow into the place that you deserve and many search engines try to insure that you do not rise above or fall below this position. This is why they are so strict, and this is why you must keep yourself on good terms with them.
Continue reading »

written by admin \\ tags: , ,

Mar 03

A Lot of Search Engine Optimization and Search Engine Marketing Professionals are voicing their opinions and saying than directories are dead. But remember, these are the people that also say that Page Rank is dead, SEO is dead, and the latest this is dead theory. So is directory link building no longer worthy? well only the Search Engines can tell you for sure.

I believe the real issue with directory links is that only some of them are good and worthy, while some others are junk, being able to tell this difference is the key between loosing your time and having a fruitful link building campaign. How you can tell if a directory is good enough or that you should pass it. Here are the 3 main criteria of identifying a good directory from a bad one.

- The directory is listed in the Search Engines and most pages are being crawled.

You can find the directory in the most popular search engines, Google, Yahoo, MSN, and Ask. Also the category pages of the directory are cached on the search engines, if the directory offers detail pages, these should be indeed too.
Continue reading »

written by admin \\ tags: ,

Feb 25

The number one factor that makes or breaks your website is whether or not people can use it. This is typically referred to as your website’s usability. It seems simple: if people can’t do what you want them to do (buy things, subscribe to things, request a call, etc.), they won’t do it. Yet, because websites are so easy to change, several companies just create websites, web applications, e-newsletters, etc., and hope that the changes will help their business.

What further confuses this is typically a lack of clear insight into your website’s performance. For example, how well does your website convert visitors into buyers? What are the key decisions that visitors must make on your website? Do you give them the information and tools necessary to make those decisions?

This article will help you focus on 3 proven techniques for improving your website’s performance: website analytics, usability testing, and personas. Exactly how you choose to implement these techniques is obviously up to you. However, one thing is guaranteed: all three techniques help you get closer to the people who visit your website: their needs, their desires, and their behaviors. This information is critical if you plan to optimize your website’s usability to achieve your goals.
Continue reading »

written by admin \\ tags: , ,

Feb 21

Visitors and search engines love content-rich web sites, but just having a lot of content on your web site is not enough. It all has to be relevant to a main topic with each page or section of the web site having a specific theme (And yes, this includes any resource or links pages the site may have). Each page should have its own topic and content should not stray to a different topic.

If you are promoting your graphic design business and have a page on business card design, stay on the topic and refrain from using a page title such as “Graphic Design company in Vancouver, Canada – business cards, logos, letterheads”. Your want the business card design to be the most important key phrase.

There are two main reasons for content relevancy. The first is so that visitors have an easy time understanding the flow of your web site. Visitors who have to search through multiple pages to find the information they’re looking for won’t be visitors much longer. The average web site user takes about three seconds to decide whether or not stay on a site. A clear idea of what your site is about should be apparent immediately, followed by easy navigation to other pages that display further topics in more detail.
Continue reading »

written by admin \\ tags: , ,